In 2017, there were 7,672 games released on Steam, the world’s most popular video game service. That’s 21 games every single day. (For context, in 2013 that number was 565.) As of January 2018, if you filter out the dross, the average Steam game sells about 1,000 copies, according to independent data-crunching by publisher No More Robots. This is the dispiriting reality that independent game developers are working with: at this month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, there were queues up and down the hallway for a talk entitled “Making indie games that sell”.
Patrick Söderlund is the executive vice-president of one of the biggest game publishers in the world, EA – a company far removed from these problems, making multimillion-dollar games with studios that employ hundreds of people. Twenty years ago, though, he was part of a three-person team working out of an apartment in Sweden, making the original Battlefield games that have since become one of EA’s largest money-makers. It’s partly this experience that has led him to believe that big publishers such as EA should help independent games get made.
“It actually is important to me. When I started my own company, we had the same passion and conviction that I know a lot of smaller developers have today,” he says. “We had an idea for a game that we believed should be made, one that we were building because we wanted to play it ourselves and there was nothing out there like it. That became the foundation of our business. It took me years and years, struggling with budgets, recognition and being seen. I’ve been through it all. And I can also say that when I did it 20 years ago, I think it was actually easier than it is today. Today’s developers are in a very different, more difficult world. I figured I could help – that we should help, as a company. I believe that we should be able to afford to support the development community.”
Last year, EA started a programme called EA Originals to partner with a lucky few independent developers each year, helping to fund and market their games. Uniquely, EA does not take a cut of the profits from those games: after its costs have been met, the profits go straight back to the developer. This is an unusually generous arrangement in the video games industry, so much so that it seems difficult to believe – but Söderlund takes a long-term view of the return on investment.
“It’s a way for us to get in touch with developers who we might not normally talk to. It’s also a way for us to broaden our overall portfolio with games that are different from what we can develop on our own,” he says. “The most successful scenario is if the game sells like crazy and people love it, but also, we can establish a relationship with that developer and they work with us long-term … [These games] don’t have to sell loads. If we can help a studio to achieve financial stability, that’s a great result.”
Like Söderlund, the EA Originals games that have been released so far are all from Sweden. Coldwood Interactive’s Unravel, a sweet puzzle game with an affecting environmental message, was the first unofficial test run of this strategy; when its developer appeared on stage at a huge EA press conference in 2015, shaking with nerves and clutching a little character made of yarn, it was such an endearing change in tone from the usual sports and shooting of EA’s bigger games that he became instantly internet-famous.
Fe, released earlier this year, is a visually striking game about a little creature in a forest. A Way Out, which came out last week, is a B-movie-style prison-escape action game that can only be played by two people at the same time. They’re very far removed from EA’s own games – Fifa, Star Wars Battlefront, UFC, Need for Speed – but then, that’s rather the point.
“We look for things that are unique and that complement our own development porfolio – that deserve to be made and played,” says Söderlund. “Unfortunately a lot of the games coming out now are just more of the same, and if I were to give any recommendation to creatives, it would be to think about what you’re building and why you’re building it, and understand that it has to be something different.”
EA’s own studios are facing down different threats. When a game costs tens of millions to make, the stakes are extremely high, creative risks become intimidatingly expensive, and the price of failure can be devastating. This all contributes to a sense of ennui with the world’s most successful video game series: typically, only small changes are made year on year.
“If you’re working on a large AAA game with a lot of money at stake, you have to always balance how much risk you’re willing to take on the concept and execution, versus staying in a familiar zone,” Söderlund acknowledges. “My job is to challenge our teams, dare them to be innovative, to come up with viable, smart ideas. That’s the challenge: how do you balance innovation versus falling back to old habits. We must constantly retrain our brains to think forward … If we don’t do it, someone else is going to do it.”
EA has also struggled recently to balance the need to monetise its games with players’ experiences. Star Wars Battlefront II attracted immense ire from players and industry commentators last year when it emerged that people would have to play for 40 hours to unlock the best characters – or throw money at loot boxes that might unlock them at random. The backlash was so severe that EA removed the paid-for elements from the game entirely. Last week, it was overhauled in an attempt to win back some goodwill, but video game fans can be slow to forgive when they feel that someone has tried to exploit them.
“I think as with any creative form where you run a large team, such as in games or film, you have to realise that not everything you do will be successful. Every developer on the planet can attest to that,” says Söderlund. “When things don’t go as you thought they would, you have to be very humble towards what happened, take an honest approach with yourself and with the result, and try to do better next time. This was an example of change that didn’t work. There’s no getting away from the fact that we made some decisions that I think in hindsight we shouldn’t have made. Neither the developer nor [EA] intended to create a slot machine or take money from people, though that was the perception.”
In a way, EA Originals is a way for the company to spread its bets: it can continue to direct its resources towards Fifa, Madden, Battlefield and its other safe series, while supporting more unusual games at smaller studios. There is a moral element to the way Söderlund talks about this: if the biggest companies in games won’t support independent developers, who will? But it’s a business imperative, too: if game-makers are allowed to slide towards creative bankruptcy, real bankruptcy is never far behind.
